Academics
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01:988:368 Producing Identities: Race, Gender, Class, and Sexualities (3)
Social constitution of the self and communities through emergence and transformation of concepts and categories (race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality) associated with personal identity.
01:988:350 Gender and Spirituality (3)
Class explores women's spirituality, feminist theology, and spiritual systems from around the world. How are spiritual systems and practices gendered?
01:988:344 Women and Leadership (3)
Course explores women's leadership for social change at work, in politics, communities, and the household in a variety of historical and contemporary meetings.
Prerequisites: By special permission of instructor. Students for this course must have applied and been accepted into the IWL Leadership Scholars Program.
01:988:341 Gender and Popular Culture (3)
Use of varied theoretical approaches to examine how popular culture texts shape everyday perceptions of race, gender, family, and nation. Texts include film, television, and radio. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 201 or 235 or permission of instructor.
01:988:337 Globalization, Sex, and Families (3)
Transnational intimacies, travel, and migration. Case studies of transnational adoption, marriage, sex work, and domestic work. Larger contexts of globalization and impact on families and sexual relations.
01:888:290:01 Introduction to Critical Sexualities (3)
- Instructor: Louisa Schein
This synchronous online course introduces students to the study of sexuality from historical, cross-cultural, contemporary and global perspectives. We will look at the different meanings given to sexuality and how sexual practices manifest in diverse contexts and consider how they are shaped by culture and media, economy, race and ethnicity, social structure, policy, stigma etc. We ask: what is defined as sex and what is prescribed and prohibited in diverse communities? What is considered normal and what perverse? How is sexuality related to gender, to homoerotics, to trans? What defines a sexual minority? We will look at questions of persecution, discrimination and activism, and at transnational flows and interactions between societies and peoples. In Fall 2020 we will zoom in (literally!) on topics related to our times. We will analyze COVID-19 through the lens of the earlier HIV/AIDS crisis. We will delve into movements for racial justice in relation to sexuality and racial representation as well as sexuality, policing and incarceration. Dynamics of sexuality in China will be considered. Readings, guest lectures and lots of films cover historical, ethnographic, theoretical, sexological, literary and creative approaches to both the U.S. and many other parts of the world.
01:888:290 Introduction to Critical Sexualities (4)
Introduction to the study of sexuality as well as sexual and gendered identity from multidisciplinary and historical perspectives. Includes U.S. and European approaches to sexology, legal regulation of sexual practices, and family formation.
Graduate Course Descriptions
Course Descriptions
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Course Descriptions: Selected Graduate Courses
Course Descriptions: Selected Graduate Courses - Fall 2026
Course Descriptions
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01:988:333 Power, Subjectivity, and Resistance (3)
Examines development of feminist concepts of power and the relations between feminist and patriarchal theories.
Undergraduate Program
Undergraduate Director:Dr. Yana Rodgers
Sr. Department Administrator: Monique Gregory
The Women's & Gender Studies undergraduate program, founded in the early seventies, is one of the oldest in the nation. Currently, the program has over 200 majors and minors and serves over 1900 students annually in a wide array of core and cross-listed courses. The major, approved in 1984, introduces students to significant issues and debates in feminist scholarship, theory, and activism.
“Women’s & Gender Studies seek to enrich traditional disciplinary approaches not simply by including women but by transforming the categories, through which knowledge is produced and disseminated.”
All courses are interdisciplinary and each considers the complex dynamics among race, ethnicity, locality, class, gender, and sexuality. The readings and discussions in each class represent a wide variety of women's perspectives concerning issues such as: the conceptualization of difference, the production and recreation of femininity and masculinity, language and gender, the division of labor, women and poverty, sexual violence, reproductive rights, gay and lesbian theory, gender and popular theory, and contemporary feminist politics. Ultimately, we strive to ground both research and theory in the everyday realities of feminist activism around the globe. Women’s & Gender Studies program faculty, students and staff are active members and leaders of academic and community women’s organizations.
The WGS alumnae pursue their professional career in various fields. One-fifth of our graduates continue their education in graduate programs in different fields (political science, English, law) around the country. Many alumnae also engage in work in the area of health and pharmacy (about one fourth). Others choose law (one-fifth of the alumnae), education (one fourth) media or computer studies. Many WGS graduates continue their activist work in non-governmental organizations that engage with women and work, international politics and women’s leadership.
Graduate Program
The Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies offers the Ph.D., the M.A. , and a Graduate Certificate Program. The graduate program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is the joint enterprise of a diverse Graduate Faculty comprising more than 100 scholars. Our students benefit from the rich resources of the larger feminist community at Rutgers which includes 27 Ph.D. students, 21 M.A. students, and over 100 Ph.D. students in other departments who are pursuing certificates in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In addition, the many Rutgers institutes and centers devoted to feminist research -- the Institute for Women's Leadership, the Center for American Women and Politics, the Center for Women's Global Leadership, the Center for Women and Work and the Institute for Research on Women -- enrich the opportunities for our students to gain practical skills and to broaden their knowledge of feminist research and politics.